Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Around the World

My girls always learn best through projects where the reading is connected to life and life is then connected back to learning. This is time intensive. It can slow down the reading of a book and extend what could be a week long assignment into a two week long project. We have never been about rushing through curriculum but more about wandering our way through what we are learning about and finding some experience to make it stick.

My girls are not always self motivated. We are not true unschoolers, although we follow many of the guiding principals of unschooling. As their mother and educator I have to introduce to them topics, facts, stories, subjects that they may not stumble upon through their interests. Around the World in 80 Days has a chapter detailing an extremist Hindu sect preparing for a human sacrifice while transporting a statue of the Goddess Kali. As I was listening, I knew we had to dig deeper. My plans for math and science were pushed aside and we took a trip to the library, pulled out every book in the children’s section about Hinduism, and set about creating an informative collage.

In the video Ghandi is mentioned. He was also mentioned in the documentary we watched about the Suez Canal. We will have to learn about him next. I pre-ordered the Who was Ghandi? book on Amazon which will deliver in 3 weeks. Our learning is very fluid moving from one topic to another related topic all the while deepening our understanding on what we originally set out to discover.

2 comments:

We read Around the World in 80 Days a couple of years ago and it was a memorable one. Although we didn't go as in depth as you are going, we did chart Phileas Fogg's journey and discussed some of the book's themes as we went along. We still remember much of it and reference it from time to time.

If I had to choose between breadth vs. depth, I would choose to go deep every time. EVERYTHING is connected (I am amazed over and over at how much this is true) so there are several topics being learned at the same time, all the time.

Very interesting. I have been researching Hindu gods for my job and have learned so much. I love the way you learn. And I agree with Cassie, I would go deep every time too. Deep is the things you remember forever.